While housing starts will likely hit the 1 million mark this year, that's still far below the average of 1.46 million starts per year over the last half-century, RBC's Robert Wetenhall notes in a new research report. Wetenhall predicts starts to reach 1.05 million in 2015 and 1.1 million in 2016.

"Slower demographic growth, a soft labor market, tight lending standards, and a sharp increase in the cost of home ownership will make incremental volume growth more difficult to achieve if [economic growth] continues tracking in the range of 2 percent to 2.5 percent," RBC analysts wrote in the report.

Instead, many builders are focusing on catering more to the luxury market by building pricier homes instead of trying to increase the overall number of units they're constructing.